This week, House Bill 298 to defund Planned Parenthood will be heard in the House Health Committee, and Ohio Right to Life is working overtime to generate calls and emails to legislators to support the measure.

“The effort to defund Planned Parenthood has been stalled once in the General Assembly, but we have another chance,” aid ORTL director Mike Gonidakis.

“Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, performing over 320,000 abortions per year. For every one adoption they refer, they abort 391 babies,” Gonidakis continued. “What is most jarring is that Planned Parenthood performs an abortion upon 91% of all of the pregnant clients that walk through their doors. And we, as American taxpayers, are funding this organization.”

“We know abortion does not help women – and Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider,” he said. “You can help us bring an end to our forced working relationship with the largest abortion provider in the nation. You can help us defund Planned Parenthood.”

The hearing begins at 9:00 a.m. at the Ohio Statehouse, Room 116. At the last hearing held for legislation to defund them, Planned Parenthood supporters clad in their pink T-shirts filled the hearing room and overflow rooms and Gonidakis hopes pro-life advocates will turn out in big numbers this time.

Last month, the Ohio House of Representatives defeated an effort by pro-life advocates to revoke taxpayer funding from Planned Parenthood.

An amendment had been added to a bill to shut down taxpayer financing of the nation’s biggest abortion business but the state House removed a pro-life amendment from Governor Kasich’s Mid-Biennium Review legislation. The amendment would have defunded Planned Parenthood in Ohio but the House Finance Committee stripped the pro-life amendment, therefore terminating any opportunity to fast track this initiative.

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Led by pro-life Representatives Kristina Roegner, Cliff Rosenberger and Chairman Ron Amstutz, the legislative amendment embraced the critical need to support low-income women and their children in order to receive health care.

Gonidakis said the new legislative approach would have ensured that tax dollars allocated to health programs for uninsured and underinsured women will continue. The initiative promoted women’s health by restructuring how Ohio tax dollars are distributed, giving priority to those health centers where a majority of Ohio women receive care.

Gonidakis said pro-abortion lobbyists “will recklessly claim that women will be denied health care with the enactment of this legislation.”

“In reality, there are over 130 health districts and over 160 community health centers in Ohio that provide family planning services as well as comprehensive primary care. Groups like Planned Parenthood are only attempting to protect the taxpayer money that they have received for decades,” he said.